THE MORAL BIOGRAPHY OF WEALTH:
PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE FOUNDATION OF
PHILANTHROPY
BY PAUL G. SCHERVISH*
Introduction
In this essay, I discuss the meaning of a moral
biography of wealth in an effort to explore the philosophical
and moral foundations of major gifts by major donors.
Describing the intersection of capacity and moral purpose in
the life of donors, in general, and wealth holders, in particular,
will clarify what is at stake as individuals attend to the deeper
purposes and prospects of their growing discretionary income
and wealth. The present and future prospects of philanthropy
are abundant. By understanding the meaning and practice of
moral biography, donors and fundraisers alike will be
equipped to forge an even more abundant allocation of wealth
to philanthropy and in a more rewarding manner.
The term moral biography refers to the way
individuals conscientiously combine two elements in daily
life: personal capacity and moral compass. Living a moral
biography is something as simple as leading a good life, and
something as profound as following Aristotle’s teachings on
freedom and virtue. Understanding how wealth holders
approach the ultimate meaning of life as a moral biography
and their wealth as a tool for care of others will help
fundraisers to work more closely and, ultimately, more
productively with the donors they wish to bring into a
collaborative relationship in the service of their institution’s
mission. My hope is that clarifying the meaning of a moral
biography will help fundraisers to understand their donors
better and to help their donors chart a path of greater
happiness for themselves, their families, and others in the
world about whom they care. For the primary need of wealth
*Paul G. Schervish is Professor of Sociology and Director of the
Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, and Research
Fellow at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. Schervish
was appointed a Fulbright Scholar for the 2000-2001 academic year
at University College Cork in the area of research on philanthropy.
For the 1999-2000 academic year he was appointed Distinguished
Visiting Professor at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy.
He received a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of
Detroit, a Masters in sociology from Northwestern University, a
Masters of Divinity Degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at
Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. He has been selected five times to the
NonProfit Times, “Power and Influence Top 50,” a list which
acknowledges the most effective leaders in the non-profit world.
Schervish serves regularly as a speaker and consultant on how to
surface and analyze the moral biographies of wealth holders, on the
motivations for charitable giving, and on the spirituality of financial
life. Email: paul.schervish@bc.edu
April 2005
BOSTON COLLEGE
CENTER ON WEALTH
AND PHILANTHROPY
About CWP
The Center on Wealth and Philanthropy
(CWP) is a multidisciplinary research center
specializing in the study of spirituality,
wealth, philanthropy, and other aspects of
cultural life in an age of affluence. Founded
in 1970, CWP is a recognized authority on
the relation between economic wherewithal
and philanthropy, the motivations for
charitable involvement, and the underlying
meaning and practice of care.
The leading cultural and spiritual question of
the current era is how to make wise decisions
in an age of affluence. The increase of
personal affluence and wealth has put before
increasing numbers of people the opportunity
to decide something substantial: whether and
how they wish to move from an emphasis on
the quantity of their wants to the quality of
their needs. The implication for charitable
giving is that we will increasingly find
affluent and wealthy individuals across all
generations and business backgrounds
tending either to freely give as a path to care
for others and happiness for themselves, or to
politely meet quotas. In an environment of
liberty, giving that is extracted will be
resisted; giving that is invited as a way for
donors to identify with the fate of others will
be honored.
Research Support
Over the past twenty years CWP has received
generous support from the T.B. Murphy
Foundation Charitable Trust, which funded
CWP's groundbreaking Study on Wealth and
Philanthropy; the Indiana University Center
on Philanthropy; the W. K. Kellogg
Foundation; the Lilly Endowment, Inc.; and
the Boston Foundation.
Contact Information
Center on Wealth and Philanthropy
Boston College
McGuinn Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467-3807
Phone: (617) 552-4070
Email: cwp508@bc.edu
Web: http://www.bc.edu/cwp
2
holders today is the noble need of every person,
namely to clarify and pursue their moral
biography in the quest for effectiveness and
significance. Those who address philanthropy
are always first addressing moral biography.
The moral vocation for all people in all
ages is to combine capacity and moral compass
into a moral biography. But the variation I want
to focus on here is the moral biography of
wealth. This is the distinctive combination of
capacity and moral compass particular to those
with sufficient financial capacity to shape and
not just live within the organizations and
institutions of their day. For wealth holders the
main difference is that figuring out and living a
moral biography entails the responsibilities and
rewards of greater financial capacity and a more
socially consequential moral compass.
In the first section, I provide several
examples from literature and the contemporary
scene to demonstrate my definition of moral
biography as the confluence of capacity and
character. In the second section, I elaborate the
elements of a moral biography, which I derive
from Aristotle and sociologists who write about
the workings of human agency. In the third
section, I describe the characteristics of
consciousness that, when present, make one’s
moral biography a spiritual or religious
biography. In the fourth section, I discuss the
aspects of capacity and moral compass that
comprise a moral biography of wealth. In the
fifth section, I discuss how implementing a
process of discernment will enable development
professionals to work more deeply and
productively with their donors and potential
donors. In the conclusion, I place the issue of
the moral biography of wealth in a larger
historical context and encourage advancement
professionals to deepen their own moral
biography by working to deepen the moral
biography of their donors.
Moral Biography As the Confluence of
Capacity And Character
Several examples from history and
literature will help to clarify what I mean by a
moral biography. The story of Moses as told in
the Book of Exodus and of Luke Skywalker in
Star Wars are the most detailed of these
examples. Moses is born a powerless son of
Hebrew slaves, yet soon becomes the adopted
heir of the Pharaoh. He enjoys princely
empowerment and anticipates ascendancy to the
throne. But Moses gradually discovers his true
bloodline, realizes that the power he wields lacks
The Moral Biography of Wealth
true moral compass, abdicates his right to
succession, and flees to the mountains. There in
the highlands, with no greater capacity than that
of a stout shepherd and faithful spouse, he
receives a new mandate from the Lord cloaked in
the burning bush. Moses protests that he lacks
the power to accomplish his mission and,
besides, he stutters. The Lord promises Moses
an arsenal of miraculous powers to face down
the Pharaoh and says Aaron his brother will help
him speak. And so it happens. Moses, imbued
with the confluence of material capacity and
moral purpose, breaks the resolve of the Pharaoh,
parts the waters of the Red Sea, and, with moral
direction becoming geographical bearing, leads
his people through the desert from the clay
towers of slavery to the land flowing with milk
and honey. Nearing the final chapter of his
gospel, Moses falters in trust and obedience,
striking the rock for water twice rather than once
as the Lord commanded. As punishment for this
lapse in character, the Lord arrests Moses’s
geographical progression at the outskirts of the
promised land.
Because of its fairy-tale simplicity and
cosmic overtones, Star Wars also exemplifies the
fundamental components of a moral biography
that we similarly find in the sagas of Superman,
Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, The Lord of the
Rings and the like. Luke Skywalker, the hero of
the original three films, enters the story as a
dutiful orphan farm boy with no special capacity
or moral compass other than to help his aunt and
uncle tend their farm on the desert planet
Tatooine. But he soon becomes caught up in the
galactic confrontation between the Rebellion
involving a diminishing cadre of Jedi Knights
embodying the moral compass of the good side
of “the Force,” and the Empire, represented by
former Jedi Darth Vader, who has become
aligned to the dark side. When Vader’s troopers
murder his guardians, Skywalker’s familiar
capacity and moral bearing are thrown into
disarray, and he takes up a regime of Jedi
training to assist the Republic. The more he
becomes implicated in the interstellar struggle,
the more Skywalker must turn to his Jedi
mentors to obtain a more powerful capacity and
a wiser moral compass. At times his budding
powers exceed the strength of his character,
imperiling himself and his companions. At other
times, Skywalker’s moral purpose outstrips his
still developing capacity, and he enters a fray
unprepared. Eventually, Skywalker fully
acquires a Jedi moral biography and, in a
struggle unto death, rekindles Vader’s noble
moral compass.
3
The confluence of capacity and moral
compass is also the theme of Jesus’s life. Each
of the four Gospels tells how Jesus possessed
both the physical power to work miracles and
rise from the dead and the strength of character
to resist temptations, teach and live the Sermon
on the Mount, minister to his followers, and
sacrifice his life. Homer’s story of Odysseus
returning home from the battle of Troy and
Virgil’s account of Aeneus establishing Rome
both recount how well gods and mortals link
physical and mental prowess with moral purpose
and wisdom. For instance, Odysseus uses his wit
to navigate the treacherous straits between Scylla
and Charybdis and to avoid the seduction of the
Sirens’ melody. For his part, Aeneus must
repeatedly recover his moral and geographic
bearings to keep from dallying in Crete and
being sidetracked in Carthage by his love affair
with Dido.
Our contemporary world also offers
examples. Mother Teresa’s moral compass led
her to muster the resources of companions and
donors to care for those she called “the poorest
of the poor.” Closer to home, we hear
presidential candidates recounting their lives as
morality tales, telling how in the past they
deployed public resources and personal skills in
the service of moral purpose, and how in the
future, they will do so better than their
opponents.
Despite the larger-than-life quality of
many of the foregoing examples, they are, in the
end, only heightened instances of how each of us
applies resources in the service of a moral
purpose--be that running a business, raising
children with care, completing a college degree,
buying a house, or making donations to charity.
The Elements of a Moral Biography
In this section I delve more deeply into
the theory and concepts of moral biography,
asking the reader to refer back to the previous
examples, to their own experience, and to the
biographies of their donors in order capture the
meaning of moral biography in its concrete
expressions. My starting point for discussing
the elements of a moral biography is Aristotle’s
philosophy of the good life. Figure 1 provides a
diagram of Aristotle’s thinking. In the
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle reasons to the
conclusion that the goal of life is happiness and
that achieving happiness results from an ever
deeper realization of the purpose of life.
Happiness is what we today would call an inner
apprehension that life is full and fulfilling. Such
happiness is never finally achieved, because we
The Moral Biography of Wealth
experience an ever-receding horizon of needs
that pulls us away from unhappiness and toward
deeper happiness. For Aristotle, we achieve
greater happiness by making wise choices. As
such, the simplest definition of a moral
biography is a life engaged in making wise
choices. Aristotle (1999: III.1) insists on the
importance of both elements of the good life: the
freedom to choose and the virtue of wise
judgments or practical wisdom (phronesis) (see
also VI.7). Freedom is the ability to decide with
liberty among a range of alternatives. Wisdom is
the virtue of sensitized knowledge that lends
direction to the choices people make. There can
be no virtue without having the freedom for
voluntary choice; and there can be no true
freedom without the virtue of wisdom.
Figure 2 is my elaboration of what I
have culled from Aristotle. It represents the fruit
of some of my research and draws on the work
of several social scientists whose work on
agency I find valuable (e.g. Giddens 1984;
Sewell 1992; Emirbayer and Mische 1998).
Starting at the top of the figure, a moral
biography is the perpetual migration of a
choosing agent from genesis to telesis, from
history to aspiration. Genesis is the starting
condition within which we act. It refers to both
the ultimate and more immediate origins of the
world and our personal life. Genesis is the set of
social and personal conditions within which
agency takes place. It is the chosen and
unchosen past that constitutes the given
circumstances of our lives. These include the
constraints, resources, knowledge, feelings, and
values within which all our choices are made.
These initial conditions do not decide our
choices in the narrow sense of determinism. But
they are what we have to work with, for example
a happy or homeless childhood, a prospering or
failing business, a confident or hesitant
personality, and so forth.
Telesis is the destiny of outcomes
toward which we aspire. It can be an
intermediate goal situated within the context of
an ultimate goal, or it can be the ultimate goal of
life. As the end we wish to achieve or the
destiny we wish to shape, telesis is related to the
possibilities, aspirations, needs, desires, and
interests we are drawn to achieve. Although we
may have shaped conditions in the past, they are
nevertheless what our agency has to work with at
any point in time. In contrast,
aspirations—although ultimately limited by the
reality around us and by our ability to imagine
and achieve alternatives—are the allies of
freedom that invite us to transcend and transform
the conditions of the past. Genesis is about the
4
conditions we receive, telesis is about the
consequences we strive to create.
If genesis concerns what is in the past
and telesis concerns what can be in the future,
agency is about what we are doing in the present
to close the gap between history and aspiration.
Agency derives from the Latin agere, meaning to
do or to act. Agency is the enactment of choice,
both about weighty issues and everyday matters.
It is carried out in the environment of conditions
with which we are faced. But it is oriented
toward transcending those conditions in the light
of the needs, desires, and objectives that
motivate our choices. As such, a moral
biography is the sequence of acts of agency or
wise choices we make in the context of where we
have come from and where we want to go.
Moving down and through Figure 2, we
come to the discussion of capacity and moral
compass. Since I have already said a lot about
this, I will be brief. I use a variety of terms to
describe capacity and moral compass in order to
capture other dimensions of the factors which
animate agency. Each dimension of capacity
listed in the left-hand box can be paired with any
dimension of moral compass listed in the righthand box, and visa versa. In addition to
speaking about a moral biography as the
intersection of capacity and moral compass or
empowerment and character, we can describe it
as the crossroad of freedom and purpose,
effectiveness and significance, energy and
strength of character, capital and value, and
material wherewithal and spiritual wherewithal.
Identifying our own terms for the confluence of
capacity and moral compass, both in general and
in particular circumstances, is a path to self
knowledge and is itself an important act of moral
agency.
Spiritual Biography
Before leaving the topic of historical
conditions and achievable aspirations, I want to
discuss what makes a moral biography a spiritual
biography. Thus far I have used the adjectives
moral and spiritual interchangeably. And while
I do not want to make too much of the distinction
now, I do recognize from my personal interviews
with individuals from across the economic
spectrum how readily and explicitly they speak
about the spiritual dimension of their life.
In my model, a spiritual biography
exists when the capacity and moral compass of a
moral biography derive from one’s ultimate
origin and seeks to advance one’s ultimate
purpose. An ultimate purpose, explains
The Moral Biography of Wealth
Aristotle, is that self-determined end that people
identify as their fundamental goal of life. It is
that end, says Aristotle (1999: I.2.1. and I.7),
which through a successive sequence of testing
turns out to be that purpose which serves no
additional purpose. An important goal may be to
obtain an education or buy a house. But in both
cases I can identify a deeper goal such as
happiness that education and owning a house
serve in turn. A simple further distinction is to
define a religious biography as one that considers
the ultimate genesis and telesis of one’s life to be
connected to what Rudolf Otto (1923) calls the
numinous, a being or force to which we bow our
head in a relationship of worship. Those who
consider their ultimate end to be akin to
Maslow’s notion of self-actualization or
Heidegger’s participation in Being would be
likely to define their moral biography as
spiritual. Those whose ultimate end is to enter
into the unity of love of God, love of neighbor,
and love of self, as Aquinas puts it, would be
likely to understand their moral biography as
religious.
The Moral Biography of Wealth
Thus far I have spoken about moral
biography in general. I now want to discuss
what is different about capacity and moral
compass in a moral biography of wealth. Put
simply, the difference is that wealth holders
enjoy a substantially elevated level of material
capacity and a more socially consequential moral
compass. They have the capacity to produce and
not just enter into alternatives and a moral
compass of great expectations, aspirations, and
responsibilities. Wealth holders are Moses of the
Exodus rather than Moses of the highlands, Luke
Skywalker the Jedi Knight rather than Skywalker
the orphan farm hand.
The exciting prospect of exploring
the moral biography of wealth today is that
there is an inner connection between the
horizons of wealth and spiritual life. The
growing material capacity that is creating
more wealth holders is accompanied by new
challenges and opportunities for character and
character formation. In his 1930 essay, “The
Economic Possibilities for Our
Grandchildren,” John Maynard Keynes wrote
about the growth in financial wealth and its
implications for the growth in spiritual wealth.
According to Keynes, “[t]he economic
problem [of scarcity] may be solved, or at least
within sight of solution, within a hundred
years. This means that the economic problem
5
is not—if we look into the future—the
permanent problem of the human race” [italics
in the original] (1930 [1933], p. 366). “I look
forward,” he continues, “to the greatest change
which has ever occurred in the material
environment of life for human beings in the
aggregate… Indeed, it has already begun.
The course of affairs will simply be that there
will be ever larger and larger classes and
groups of people from whom problems of
economic necessity have been practically
removed” (p. 372). The consequence of lifting
economic necessity will be that “for the first
time since his creation man will be faced with
his real, his permanent problem—how to use
his freedom from pressing economic cares,
how to occupy the leisure, which science and
compound interest will have won for him, to
live wisely and agreeably and well” (p. 367).
We can see that Keynes forecasts both
an unprecedented material horizon and the
cultural consequences that flow from it. The
economic possibilities he charts become the
foundation for new spiritual possibilities. I will
discuss each in turn. But like Keynes, I will
spend more time on the latter, for we are only at
the dawn of the spiritual and cultural
transformation Keynes envisioned, and so most
wealth holders know more about the economic
than the spiritual prospects of their wealth.
Growth in Capacity
From 1950 through the third quarter of
2004 the annual real rate of growth in wealth has
been 3.31%, despite the fact that nine recessions
occurred over this period. In 1985 when I first
began my research on wealth and philanthropy,
the big news was that the day had arrived when
the United States had one million millionaires.
Today there are over 8 million households with a
net worth of $1 million or more in today’s
dollars, and over 5 million households
controlling for inflation since 1985. In the 2004
edition of the Forbes 400 richest Americans, 312
are billionaires and it now takes a net worth of
$675 million to make the list. My colleague,
John Havens, calculates from the Federal
Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances that of
the 106.5 million households in the U.S. 436,000
households had net worth of $10 million or more
in 2001. Of these about 7000 households had net
worth of $100 million or more, 16,500
households had net worth of $50 million to $100
million, and 412,100 had net worth of $10
million to $50 million. Even from 1998 through
2003—a period that included the recent
The Moral Biography of Wealth
recession, 9/11, the bursting of the technology
bubble, and the general stock market
decline—private wealth in the nation has still
grown at a real average annual rate of 2.6%.
Other indicators of the burgeoning of
wealth come from Havens and my wealth
transfer projections. We estimate that in 2002
dollars an unprecedented $45 trillion to $150
trillion in wealth transfer, just from estates of
final decedents, will occur over the next five
decades and that this will produce between $7
trillion and $27 trillion in charitable bequests. In
a separate projection for the same period, we
estimate that lifetime giving will provide an
additional $15 trillion to $28 trillion in charitable
contributions. Taken together, charitable
bequests and lifetime giving will range from $22
trillion to $55 trillion, with between 52% and
65% of this amount being contributed by
households with $1 million or more in net worth.
Given the 3.31%real annual rate of growth in
wealth between 1950 and the third quarter of
2004 there is every reason to expect that the
actual wealth transfer and amount of total
charitable giving will be closer to the upper
estimates (based on 4% annual real growth in
wealth) than the lower ones (based on 2% real
growth).
Hyperagency
These national trends in growth in
wealth and the ability to contribute substantial
amounts to charity indicate that not only are
there more wealth holders with greater net worth,
but that a growing proportion of them have
sufficiently solved their personal “economic
problem” so as to make major gifts to charity. In
regard to a moral biography of wealth, the
foregoing statistics are important because they
indicate the growing capacity of wealth holders
to make choices. On every dimension of
capacity listed in Figure 2, the possession of
material wealth offers the opportunity for
hyperagency. Wealth holders have a broader
array of choices, alternatives, capital, energy and
effectiveness at their disposal. Such capacity
provides wealth holders with the opportunity not
only to be agents but what I call hyperagents (see
Schervish, 1997 and Schervish, Coutsoukis, and
Lewis, 1994).
Hyperagency refers to the institutionbuilding capacity of wealth holders. Most
people spend theirs lives as agents living within
the established workings of the organizational
environments in which they find themselves.
Hyperagents too spend a good part of their lives
6
as agents in this sense. But when and where they
desire to do so, they are capable of forming
rather than just working within institutional
settings. While not all hyperagents are wealth
holders, all wealth holders are hyperagents at
least in the material realm. They can apply their
material resources to shape the tangible world.
Hyperagents, then, are world builders.
While most of us are agents who attempt to find
the best place for ourselves within existing
situations, hyperagents, when they choose, are
founders of the institutional framework within
which they and others will work. What takes a
social, political, or philanthropic movement for
agents to accomplish, hyperagents can
accomplish relatively single-handedly. They can
design their houses from the ground up, create
the jobs and businesses within which they work,
tailor-make their clothes and vacations, endow
their children, and create new foundations, new
philanthropic enterprises, and new directions for
existing charities. When we speak about today’s
donors being entrepreneurial or venture
philanthropists, we are pointing to their capacity
and disposition to shape and not just participate
in the goals and accomplishments of the causes
and charities they fund. While most of us
participate as supporters of charitable
enterprises, wealth holders, when they choose to
do so, are producers of them.
The Moral Compass of Wealth
Hyperagency is more than simply a
world-building capacity. It is also a
psychological orientation of moral
compass. In regard to the telesis of
aspiration, wealth holders harbor great
expectations, view them as legitimate,
and possess the confidence to achieve
them. The question is how liberation
from economic necessity changes the
nature of wealth holders’ great
expectations. In addition to charting
emerging economic possibilities,
Keynes describes the transformation in
moral compass that economic security
will evoke. “When the accumulation of
wealth is no longer of high social
importance, there will be great changes
in the code of morals,” he predicts.
“We shall be able to rid ourselves of the
many pseudo-moral principles. . . by
which we have exalted some of the
most distasteful of human qualities into
the position of the highest virtues” (p.
369).
The Moral Biography of Wealth
Although Keynes argues that a change
in material environment will spawn a sea change
in spiritual consciousness, he does not condemn
as lacking moral compass those who continue to
focus on generating wealth. For “the time for all
this is not yet” (p. 372). Still he does insist that
great wealth offers opportunities for a broader
and deeper horizon of aspirations and
responsibilities. Until Moses received the
capacity to defeat the Pharaoh, part the Red Sea,
and provide manna from the skies, the aspiration
to return to the land flowing with milk and honey
was not a workable dream. Only with release
from the pressing demands of slavery was there
the freedom of time and resources for the
Israelites “to live wisely and agreeably and
well.” So too for today’s wealth holders.
Although the greatest service of many
will continue to be through business and
investment, there is a new dimension of
moral compass that Keynes says can
transform the moral biography of
wealth holders. This will occur when
the accumulation of additional wealth
ceases to be a primary objective for an
individual and wealth becomes an
instrument, a tool to accomplish other
ends. It is Keynes’s aspiration that
“[t]he love of money as a
possession—as distinguished from the
love of money as a means to the
enjoyments and realities of life—will be
recognized for what it is, a somewhat
disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities
which one hands over with a shudder to
the specialists in mental disease” (p.
369).
When individuals are in the
accumulation phase of their life, making money,
although seldom the ultimate end of life, is
usually a high-priority intermediate end. When
individuals reach a level of subjectively defined
financial security, there is the potential for a shift
in moral compass whereby the accumulation of
wealth ceases to be an end and becomes more
fully a means to achieve other ends. Such ends
may be retirement, providing an inheritance,
pursuing a hobby, or enjoying more leisure. But
Keynes suggests an additional prospect, namely,
a change in “the nature of one’s duty to one’s
neighbour. For it will remain reasonable to be
economically purposive for others after it has
ceased to be reasonable for oneself” (372). The
shift of wealth from an end to a means, then, is
arguably the most significant transformation of
capacity and character for individuals who have
7
solved or are close to solving the economic
problem.
Discerning Moral Biography
Because it is not easy to decipher the moral
compass that will guide their great capacity, we
hear much from wealth holders about the
turmoil, worry, and dilemmas they face in regard
to how their riches shape the moral biographies
of themselves, their children, and those they
affect in business and in philanthropy.
Acquiring great wealth, it turns out, is the
beginning, not the end, of a moral biography of
wealth. As a result, there is a growing need for a
process of conscientious self-reflection by which
wealth holders discern how to complement the
growth in their material quantity of choice with a
commensurate growth in the spiritual quality of
choice. Wealth holders who have achieved or
are approaching financial security do not need to
own more money but to discern the moral
compass that will direct the deployment of their
wealth.
Of course, individuals and their families can
carry out this process of clarification informally
and without the assistance of others. But most
wealth holders will benefit from engaging in
what I call an extended archeological
conversation with their trusted advisors,
including development professionals. Such
conversation follows the principle that
archeology precedes architecture, that selfdiscovery comes before defining and
implementing a financial or estate plan. In an
archeological conversation, advisors and
fundraisers serve as counselors in order to help
wealth holders uncover the ideas, emotions, and
activities that shaped their moral biography in
the past, and identify the moral bearings and
purposes that they wish to advance now and into
the future. It offers the opportunity to examine
the major turning points in life, the people and
circumstances that shaped them, the hurts and
happinesses that ensued, and an agenda for the
future. In an archeological conversation, wealth
holders discern their capacities, clarify their
moral purposes, and combine the two in a way
that creates a moral biography of wealth for
themselves, their children, and others for whom
they care. When this process of discernment is
carried out with no hidden agendas and with the
purpose of helping wealth holders uncover their
true aspirations, a deeper commitment to
philanthropy invariably ensues.
The Moral Biography of Wealth
Conclusion
Throughout this paper, I have
emphasized several themes. The dramatic
growth in wealth has spawned unprecedented
freedom, material choice, and capacity. It has
also generated unique spiritual horizons of moral
compass for a growing number of wealth
holders. As a result, the overriding question
facing most wealth holders today is how to fulfill
their need for making wiser choices to forge the
moral biography of wealth in their life.
The distinctive trait of wealth holders in
all eras is that they enjoy the fullest range of
choice in determining and fulfilling who they
want to become and what they want to do for
themselves, their families, and the world around
them. Today, increasing numbers of individuals
are approaching, achieving, or even exceeding
their financial goals with respect to the provision
for their material needs, and doing so at younger
and younger ages. A level of affluence that
heretofore was the province of a scattering of
rulers, generals, merchants, industrialists, and
financiers has come to characterize whole
cultures. For the first time in history, the
question of how to align broad material capacity
of choice with spiritual capacity of character has
been placed before so many of a nation’s people.
There is of course nothing in world-building
hyperagency that requires virtue and wisdom.
Today’s Pharaohs of financial skullduggery and
totalitarianism demonstrate that well enough.
An expanded quantity of choice does not
guarantee that there will be a finer quality of
choice. But quantity of choice always prompts
the question about the moral purpose of a moral
biography that is released from economic
constraint. Making free and wise choices about
wealth allocation for the deeper purposes of life,
especially for philanthropy, is now and will
become ever increasingly the prominent feature
of financial morality and personal fulfillment for
high net worth individuals. Understanding the
components of moral biography as capacity and
moral compass, working with donors to freely
and intelligently discern their capacity and moral
compass, and offering opportunities that fulfill
donors’ desire simultaneously to increase their
own happiness and the happiness of others is the
sterling new vocation and, indeed, moral
biography of development and advancement
professionals.
1
I am grateful to The T. B. Murphy Foundation Charitable
Trust, the John Templeton Foundation, and to the Lilly
Endowment, Inc. for supporting the research and writing of
this article.
8
The Moral Biography of Wealth
Figure 1
Aristotle’s Ethics
Happiness and Wise Choices
CurrentStatus
Where one is
Ultimate End of Life
Where one wants to
be
Partial happiness
Greater happiness
Means to Obtain One’s
Goal
Wise Choices
Wisdom
Sensitized knowledge that lends direction
Freedom
Capacity for alternatives
9
•
•
•
The Moral Biography of Wealth
/MVM[Q[
0Q[\WZa
+]ZZMV\[\I\][
Where one is
Partial happiness
Agency
Moral Biography
• Means to attain one’s
goal
•
•
Choices
Freedom
Effectiveness
Vigor (energy)
Capital
Material wherewithal
•
Wise choices
Gospel
Capacity
Empowerment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Telesis
Aspirations
•
Ultimate end of
life
•
Where one
wants to be
Moral Compass
Character
•
•
•
•
•
•
Wisdom
Purpose
Significance
Virtu (virtue)
Value
Spiritual wherewithal
Greater happiness
10
References
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1999. 2nd ed. Ed. and
trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc.
Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Ann Mische. 1998. “What is
Agency?” American Journal of Sociology,
103(4): 962-1023.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society:
Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Keynes, John Maynard. 1930/1933. “The Economic
Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” In Essays in
Persuasion. New York: MacMillan.
Otto, Rudolf. 1925. The Idea of the Holy. London:
Oxford University Press.
Schervish, Paul G. 1997. "Major Donors, Major Motives:
The People and Purposes Behind Major Gifts."
New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising:
Developing Major Gifts, 16: 85-112.
Schervish, Paul G., Platon Coutsoukis, and Ethan Lewis.
1994. Gospels of Wealth: How the Rich Portray
their Lives. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Schervish, Paul G., Mary A. O’Herlihy, and John J.
Havens. 2001. “Agent Animated Wealth and
Philanthropy: The Dynamics of Accumulation
and Allocation Among High-Tech Donors."
Social Welfare Research Institute, Boston
College. Final Report of the 2001 High-Tech
Donors Study.
Sewell, William H. Jr. 1992. “A Theory of Structure:
Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American
Journal of Sociology, 98(1): 1-29.
The Moral B